UK
The beauteous Kira, heroine of the disco fable Xanadu, is imagined in a standoff with
Carrie, the scapegoat turned persecutor. From each film Brice Dellsperger extracts
a scene and appropriates it via a destabilisation, a formal vibration that generates a
double.
Dellsperger began his Body Double series in 1995, borrowing the title readymade from
the film by Brian de Palma. From one film to the next and from remake to remake he
explores the doubling process, with the roles being played by the same actor and the
actors often turned into actresses. In this play on multiplicity he functions like a prism
traversed by a ray of light and then emitting its spectre.
For Body Double 32, Dellsperger takes the second scene from Carrie1. Played by
androgynous model Alex Wetter, a happy gang of girls are whooping it up under the
showers in a high school locker room where the rows of lockers seem to double up and
form a space-time loop. The loop comes to an end as, one by one, they disappear into
the steam and turn into infinite variations on one of their number: Carrie. Still under
the shower, Carrie herself seems unaware of what is going on around her. With a touch
of sensuality the camera suggests that the child is becoming a woman. Terror-stricken,
Carrie sees that her hands are covered with blood.
For Body Double 35, Dellsperger takes the second scene from Xanadu2. Played by
choreographer/dancer François Chaignaud, a sprightly group of Muses emerges
dancing from a painting on the wall. At an exhibition3 at the Swiss Institute in 2016
Dellsperger reproduced the wall painting and in a strange switch the creation of the
set precedes the idea of the film, even becoming its trigger. The entire equilibrium of
things seems to be affected: the shots are reversed and Kira4 dances backwards until
she becomes one with the wall. The loop is closed.
Dellsperger’s idea seems fundamentally antinomic: Kira vs. Carrie. Kira is bathed in
light, Carrie only in mist; Kira spreads love and inspiration, Carrie only death; Kira is the
daughter of a God, Carrie dances at Satan’s ball.
At Air de Paris, Body Double 32 and Body Double 35 are shown alternately on the same
screen, seemingly linked by a kind of interdependence: are not the names Kira and
Carrie phonetic anagrams? Do not the rays of light show through the mist? And on the
other side of the mirror, might not Kira be Carrie’s double?

1. The cult movie directed by Brian de Palma, released in 1976.
2. Directed by Robert Greenwald, released in 1980. A critical and commercial flop that marked the end of the disco era.
3. FADE IN: INT. ART GALLERY – DAY, Swiss Institute, New York USA, 03.03-19.05.2016